Octopus Deploy and Deploy to Farms of Servers

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1

Good evening,

I am looking for some help from the Octopus Universe to do with an issue that we are currently racking our brains around.

What do we want to do:
Basically, we have an application that we want to deploy (sounds simple ey!), this application comes in three parts (getting complex now!) Web Application layer, Web Service Layer and a Web Admin Layer
Each of these layers exists in its own environment. So the web application has a farm of four servers, the web service layer has a farm of two servers and the web admin layer has another farm of two servers.

We want to be able to do a deployment to these farms, however we want to be able to deploy to 1/2 of each farm, but together rather than separate! ie 2 Web Application, 1 Web Service and 1 Web Admin server, we will call this a Batch

The process flow we want is at a high level:
Drain Batch 1 via Powershell on our Load Balancers
Deploy Web Application, Web Service and Web Admin websites at the same time
Enable Batch 1 via Powershell on our Load Balancers

Then rinse and repeat for Batch 2

Let me know if you have any working examples of this, or any ideas on how to get this done

Thanks

2

Hi Robert,

Thanks for reaching out.

The first idea that comes to my mind is a combination of Channels + Machine Roles. Lets say you have your machines set up with the following Roles:

TargetName Role
WebApp1 Batch1
WebApp2 Batch1
WebApp3 Batch2
WebApp4 Batch2
Service1 Batch1
Service2 Batch2
AdminLayer1 Batch1
AdminLayer2 Batch2

Then you could have 2 sets of steps in your deployment process:

  1. The first set of steps would be scoped only to Targets with the Role Batch1. These steps will also be scoped to a channel called Batch1Channel

  2. The second set of steps the same, but for the role Batch2 and the channel Batch2Channel

You’ll basically end up with all the steps duplicated like this:

  1. Deploy Webapp [ for role Batch1]
  2. Deploy Webapp [ for role Batch2]
  3. Deploy Service [ for role Batch1]
  4. Deploy Service [ for role Batch2]
  5. Deploy AdminLayer [ for role Batch1]
  6. Deploy Admin Layer [ for role Batch2]

When you want to deploy to the first batch, you simply do it for the channel Batch1Channel, which will run steps 1,3 & 5 and only hit WebApp1,WebApp2,Service1,AdminLayer1.

Then once you are ready to move on with the next batch, deploy the same to the channel Batch2Channel which will run steps 2,4 & 6 and hit WebApp3,WebApp4,Service2,AdminLayer2

Hope that gives you some ideas.

Best regards,
Dalmiro.